Baltimore Magazine

My name is Emily Hunter and I am a senior Illustration major. During Fall of 2015, I was an Editorial/Art Intern at Baltimore Magazine. I had always wanted to see what it’s like to work at a publication, as my previous internship was more of an experience of working with comics. Towards the end of Spring Semester of my junior year, I had been emailing and applying to internships constantly. After consulting with Career Development, I established a contact at the magazine (Stephanie Shafer) who is the Editorial Design Assistant at Baltimore Magazine. After checking out her website, I sent as email asking about a possible internship. She later gave me Amanda White-Iseli’s information (the magazine’s art director), and I was able to snag an interview with her over the summer.

The internship itself wasn’t as stressful as I thought it would be, but I still learned a lot about magazine layout and typography which are very important things to know as an illustrator planning on going into editorial work. I created numerous mood boards for new issues, as well as worked on my own feature for my own portfolio. Towards the end of the internship I was presented with an awesome opportunity to do spot illustrations for the January issue of the magazine, in which my own illustrations will be published for the first time ever! Overall, I’m really happy with the outcome of this internship as it helped me clarify that I really enjoy editorial work.

Shine Creative Studio LLC

My name is Cass Lubberts and I am a Senior Film & Video and Humanistic Studies major. During the summer of 2015, I was a Production Assistant Intern for Shine Creative Studio, a company based in Baltimore, Maryland. I wanted to be in Baltimore whilst doing my internship so that I could continue to support myself over the summer through independent freelance video work like I had done in previous years. During the spring semester, while I was still abroad in Prague, CZ, I started looking for internships both in Baltimore and even abroad. While reaching out to my teachers and friends, I remembered that I had met Drury a year earlier on a shoot I had helped PA for MICA Graduate, Hilton Carter. During the downtime I had as a PA for Hilton, I began talking to Drury, who I immediately liked and was interested in working with. I contacted him to see if he was available to speak about my interning at his studio.

Drury responded, asking for my resume, portfolio, and cover letter to see if I was talented enough to work for his company. After a few email exchanges, meeting with him a couple times, and once I was Stateside, we started working together. I was to be the intern for Shine Creative Studio for the summer, and he promised me some additional work for money after my internship hours were fulfilled.

This experience included a lot of shooting. During the days I worked with him and his team, we went on shoots at various locations, but sometimes we just turned his studio into a set using their movable walls and lights. We have since become friends and we understand how each other work. It was fun to spend time around people who share my interests and meet his co-workers who are both a jovial and hard working bunch. Working with Shine Creative gave me insight into the world of commercial videography, and let me imagine a world outside of freelance commercial work that I am already accustomed to so far in my professional career. I also left with many new possibilities for my portfolio, in addition to another person who can recommend me for when I show my resume to other companies in the near future.

However, about two-thirds of the way done with my internship, Drury informed me that future projects, similar to those that we had been working on, weren’t scheduled for a while, and he suggested that I start looking elsewhere for a place to wrap up my internship hours.

I looked at the Maryland Film Festival, and after talking and confirming with Rahne Alexander that they could definitely use me; I decided to switch and finish my hours there. I had hoped to learn more about the in’s and outs of how people organize and structure Film Festivals. Obviously, that is extremely important to me, seeing as I hope to one day be in many festivals, so I thought it would be a perfect match for me.

Although it wasn’t always glamorous, I definitely got a better understanding of the work being done behind the scenes at the Maryland Film Festival. If I were to remain interning there I would be able to get to view a lot of incoming films and possibly meet with more filmmakers, which is a really exciting prospect.

I hope to volunteer for more events similar to those like the Parkway Theatre celebration, and definitely plan on working at the festival so that I can be around as many films and filmmakers as possible while I am still in Baltimore.

Hazard SEES

My name is Esther Kim and I am a junior Architectural Design major. During the Fall of 2015, I was a research intern for Hazard SEES. Hazard SEES is a research grant that focuses on how hazardous weathers, such as hurricanes and flooding, influence housing developments on the East Coast. MICA has been a partner with SEES for years now, integrating historical and dynamic demographic GIS mapping analysis using databases of hazardous weather modeling scenarios created by neighboring institutions such as Johns Hopkins, George Mason, and many others.

In the spring of 2015, I took an Art History course with Katie O’Meara, a faculty member of MICA's Architectural Design department. As a part of final project, I analyzed how architecture and landmarks play very important roles in shaping the current city of Lugo in Spain. The work that I produced in the class led to this internship the following semester, the fall of 2016. With the task of analyzing a large set of data extracted from National Historical Geographic Information System, I was able to develop independent research and critical thinking skills which are essential in detecting urban development patterns. By approaching Baltimore City's most critical local problems such as physical decay and racial isolation in organized ways, I learned to identify the cause of recent phenomenons and the result of a series of city planning decisions. This internship also taught me how to communicate my ideas with people from other disciplines by creating maps and graphs. Furthermore, it gave me opportunity to work and meet with a range of experts including members for the Baltimore City Planning Department and Johns Hopkins University. In addition to taking the necessary course works at Architectural Design department, I am happy that I was able to explore my interest and my future career in urban design by this research internship. It helped me to more clearly define my goals and focus for my remaining years at MICA.

Maryland Conservation Job Corps

My name is Austin Green Weinstein and I am a junior photography major and filmmaking concentrator at the Maryland Institute College of Art. During the summer of 2015, I was a staff photographer for the Maryland Conservation Job Corps, a summer conservation youth program that works side by side with the Maryland Parks Service to help maintain Maryland state parks. For the majority of my life, I have spent all of my free time fishing, hiking, and photographing in our state parks—and I have always considered working to maintain these parks as a ranger, or to document them for the government as a photographer. My outdoor skills combined with my work as an environmentally concerned photographer made me a strong candidate for the job as a staff photographer for the 2015 CJC program. Alumni Scott Bradley agreed and recommended me as the guy for the job—and I enthusiastically signed my contract to take the job.

I worked alongside Scott Bradley to photographically document the program and present our choice edits, as a thematic narrative, in a concluding photo-video montage. We were guided by our program supervisors Fred Banks (head of program) and Cindy Hawkins (program manager)—and worked with fellow crew members, park coaches, and most importantly, the youth crew members, to ensure that we documented every aspect of the program as to benefit our photographic narrative of the 2015 program. In the MD CJC program, kids from local communities are hired into corps to help maintain our local state parks. These children are taught job skills, professionalism, important principles of success; as well as conservation, shop skills, trail maintenance, principles of sustainability and ‘leave no trace’ practices. They work very hard, alongside crew chiefs and Maryland Conservation Corps employees, on park specific projects and objectives— many of which give these kids an opportunity to be a part of something significant, “that people will all be able to see and appreciate for a very long time.”

This internship experience involved a large amount of travel, working from one state park to another, and stretched my photographic coverage of the state from the far western parks to the beach on Assateague Island. I am proud to have worked in a program that makes such a huge difference in our communities, changing the lives of kids and conserving our natural resources throughout our whole state, boarder to boarder. I believe that this program changes the kids’ lives, and shows them that they have the power to make a difference in their communities, their state, and in the world. I am excited for the opportunity to apply for this position in the 2016 program—and to continue working for the state parks and other conservation organizations for the rest of my career as a professional photographer and videographer.